


Missed, Connected

by vulturer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, cliches, clichés everywhere, everywhere, no really, romcom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-11
Updated: 2011-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-23 15:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulturer/pseuds/vulturer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karter Vantas loses his bus pass and gets a couple of quarters from some random guy, who turns out to be mind-blowingly annoying. To cope with his fiery rage, Karter posts a long-winded, colorful rant on the Missed Connections section of craigslist, and then puts it out of his mind.</p><p>What ends up happening is the very last thing he ever could have expected: he gets a response.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missed, Connected

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god, look at me getting carried away again... Written for [the greatest prompt I have ever seen ever, seriously.](http://homesmut.livejournal.com/9406.html?thread=15732414#t15732414) I was helpless. It screamed to me. It's just so wonderful.
> 
> Contains large images (screenshots). Updates will be pretty slow. Thanks for reading!

**CHAPTER 1**  


 _m4m_

  
____________________________________________________

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ghostyTrickster [GT] at 6:38 --

TG: dude  
TG: holy shit  
TG: check this out  
TG: better sit down cause this shit is explosive   
GT: oh, hey dave!  
GT: how's it going?  
GT: oh sweet! i'm doing pretty good too, thanks for asking.  
GT: uhh...  
GT: why the fuck are you on the m4m section of craigslist.   
TG: bored   
GT: okay dude, whatever floats yo   
TG: hey  
TG: egbert  
TG: you still there  
TG: helloooo   
GT: oh my god

_____________

  


  


  


_____________

TG: i know right the guy must have a fucking sequoia up his ass  
TG: he done pulled out all the stops  
TG: i have respect for that level of angry   
GT: oh man.  
GT: you're not gonna believe this.  
GT: i barely believe this.   
TG: what   
GT: dude   
TG: spit it dumpass   
GT: it's about me.   
TG: come again   
GT: holy shit.  
GT: omfg.  
GT: dude, the ad is about ME.  
GT: i gave some quarters to a guy on the bus today.  
GT: i was wearing my ghost rider shirt!  
GT: GLASSES, BUCKTEETH, WORD FOR WORD QUOTING WHAT I SAID!!!!   
TG: no   
GT: yes!   
TG: no   
GT: YES!!!!   
TG: no   
GT: YESSSS DAVE, I'M NOT EVEN SHITTING YOU RIGHT NOW, THE AD IS LITERALLY ME   
TG: oh man  
TG: this is beautiful  
TG: someone get me a hankie for all these manly tears  
TG: where are my smelling salts  
TG: the crocodile has been cracked  
TG: i need an adult   
GT: what the actual fuck is happening.   
TG: i dunno bro but it sure feels like magic  
TG: you better screencap it for posterity  
TG: get it printed on some nice glossy at kinkos  
TG: i'll buy you a swank gilded frame  
TG: fatass little cherubs playing harps and singing praises about pomp and circumstance  
TG: rococo swirly bullshit and fleur-de-lis circling the most magnificent rant to ever grace the dregs of m4m missed connections  
TG: that shit deserves to go on a fucking mantle  
TG: we'll drink crown royal and stoke a fire while admiring that awe-inspiring amount of butthurt  
TG: its a christmas miracle   
GT: i'm gonna answer it.   
TG: what  
TG: no  
TG: egbert we all know youre fucking retarded sometimes  
TG: all the time  
TG: but seriously that is dipping your toe into a heated swimming pool  
TG: the temps pretty nice and its been a long day  
TG: only to discover after youve already cannonballed that its actually corrosive acid  
TG: full of razors  
TG: that were forged on satans anvil  
TG: which was made from the tears of heartbroken teenagers  
TG: all crying on their guitars and shit  
TG: where is my romeo  
TG: why is life so unfair  
TG: what did i do to deserve this awful plight  
TG: in other words  
TG: bad fucking news   
GT: just look at it though.  
GT: i mean...  
GT: that's effort.  
GT: with a capital E.  
GT: blood, sweat, and tears went into that.  
GT: it's practically prose!  
GT: i kinda feel bad just letting it go.   
TG: i guess so  
TG: it is pretty moving  
TG: for a whiny internet tough guy  
TG: welp  
TG: its your funeral   
GT: it'll be fine. you should have seen him.  
GT: he was tiny!   
TG: dude everybody is tiny compared to you  
TG: you obtuse beanpole   
GT: haha, yeah i guess!  
GT: sure had a tall personality though.   
TG: clearly  
TG: kay have fun gotta go message lalonde and harley  
TG: theyve got some reading to do  
TG: and we need to start planning for your wake  
TG: im thinking white lilies for around your casket  
TG: maybe some lavender too i dunno lalondes the expert on bogus symbolism  
TG: and we'll have a whole table of hors d'oeuvres just fucking piles of them  
TG: and theyll all be shit no one will eat  
TG: like caviar  
TG: and frog legs  
TG: and haggis   
GT: you are the best friend a guy could ask for.   
TG: preaching to the choir bro  
TG: but yeah  
TG: shoot me a line with the result  
TG: i wanna know exactly how hard the shit hits the fan   
GT: haha it probably won't be that bad.   
TG: did you even read the words dude its gonna be nuclear   
GT: uhh... actually yeah, you're probably right.  
GT: but seriously, you know me, i can't resist a good prank!  
GT: this guy's just BEGGING for it.   
TG: truer words have never been spoken   
GT: i hope i run into him again. can't wait to see the look on his face.  
GT: oh, and i want the funeral to be open casket.  
GT: with my corpse wearing a beagle puss.   
TG: done and done  
TG: happy trolling bro   
GT: thanks man!  
GT: bunp!   
TG: bunp

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ghostyTrickster [GT] at 7:05 --

_____________

  


  


  


_____________

If there was one word in the English language — one simple cluster of characters pulled from the pool of twenty-six, strung together to form a product deemed acceptable by Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and Urban dictionaries alike — that could describe the public persona of Northwestern University Computer Engineering Graduate Student Karter Vantas, it would be this: _short._

Short tempered. Focused too much on his shortcomings and shortages. Always got the short end of the stick. Wanted so badly to make short work of short-sighted people who constantly came up short and shortchanged him and made him short-circuit, but all he ever did was stop short of speaking his mind because society had him by the short hairs and if he gave in and only focused on the short term, his career would be cut short, shortened down to just a sad, short-lived, short story.

He was also five-foot-four.

Vertical challenges aside however, the real Karter Vantas; the being that manifested inside the little studio apartment just a few blocks from campus — the Unedited, Unrated Director's Cut with Bonus Special Features _truth_ that was hidden underneath multiple layers of shrink-wrapped plastic — could be described with an entirely different combination of entirely different letters; _alive._

Karter Vantas was passionate. He was motivated. He tore through movies, plays, and novels as if they were drops of cold water on Tatooine and had all but replaced the disappointing clusterfuck that was reality with these escapist obsessions. They made more sense to him and, therefore, mattered. They filled his gaps (which were numerous), and gave him something steadfast, something familiar to return to when he had a long day (which was often). When his relationships failed, these succeeded. They were always there; on the bookshelves, dumped in piles by his bed, smothering the little table where he ate his cereal, shoved to the left side of the couch. His apartment was an upended library, specializing in the most saccharine of all love stories.

 _Alive._ The word that these things made him feel was _alive._

Change just two letters, and it became _alone._

Which was also pretty accurate.

He didn't really have friends. There were a couple of people that he met and talked to regularly on the internet, but they weren't friends. They were just... voices. Things to talk at when he felt like shooting the shit, and it never really went deeper than that. There was the snooty nerd who badmouthed his programming (which he was getting _way better at, goddamnit,_ and he was going to be the _fucking best at,_ and besides, it was good enough for a _fucking grad program,_ wasn't it?). Then there was the creepy, drugged out weirdo who cussed in every other line and rambled about how life was beautiful, how art was magical, and how the world was full of motherfucking miracles (and Karter had half a mind to block the freak, except that he said really insightful things out of the blue sometimes, which made the other half of Karter's mind that told him to stick around win the vote). And then there was the allegedly almost-blind girl who apparently steamrolled Harvard Law classes and constantly chattered about dragons and how she didn't need to see when she had other perfectly great senses like sound, smell, touch, and taste (and she... she was actually pretty much all right. For a psycho). And there were some other random regulars here and there.

But no, they weren't _friends,_ they were just... there. Always there, but it didn't fucking matter because they were just words on a screen and Karter knew better than to think they were actually good people, that he had formed actual relationships with them. No, the only people, the only lives he emotionally invested himself in were the ones made of the other kind of words, the _fictional_ kind. The kind that transported him, that seduced him, and then left him hollow and wanting.

This didn't stop him. In fact, fueled by a deep-seated addiction, the emptiness that he felt after finishing a magnificent tale about star-crossed lovers that flirted, fought, fell, and then fucked (their bodies _fit,_ it was _fate)_ drove him to consume even more. It was a continuous cycle; immerse, absorb, revel, finish, feel empty. Seek out more. Repeat steps one-through-six. Allow short breaks for food, homework, and sleep. Intersperse with searing, ruminative showers and go grocery shopping at least once per week. Don't forget to do the dishes.

Also like an addiction, the more he got, the more he needed, and the worse he felt. The movies and plays and novels gave him so much, but they took away even more. After countless hours of research, hundreds of sleepless nights full of stale coffee and store-bought snickerdoodles, Karter Vantas had come to the conclusion that the real world, the space that existed outside of his little lair, was chock-full of dumbfucks. Vicious, stupid, hideous assholes that didn't have a _single_ romantic cell in their bodies; who just repeatedly screwed things up despite always thinking that they were doing it right. _Every single person_ was a _pathetic, massive shitstain_ made up of _failure._

Himself included, but at least he was aware of it. At least he didn't run around, mucking up social circles, betraying friends and breaking hearts. What was the point in even trying if the whole vehicle was rigged to crash and burn? Real life would never be a beautiful story. He would never find someone _destined,_ those people didn't _exist,_ it was all festering _bullshit._ Bullshit that he needed, desperately, _integrally_ however, and so he enveloped himself in the make-believe and tried very hard to stay there. It worked, it was familiar, and it was unchanged.

Until he checked his email.

There was a response to his post. The gangly Samaritan had somehow found his rant and responded to it. The rant that felt so intense to compose, so freeing and cathartic and _good..._ the rant that Karter then regretted writing the second he pressed "publish," the rant that made him feel like the biggest asshole to ever walk this earth, the rant that projected all of his feelings about the world onto one clueless, naive guy who probably was just a know-nothing moron...

It had an answer. It was no longer pointless electrical information. That rant that was now the most justified thing Karter Vantas had ever written in his life.

This. This was it. This was destined.

He had finally found it.

He had found someone to truly loath.

 _This was fucking fate._


End file.
